How to Remember

https://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/how-to-remember-anything-you-really-want-to-remember-backed-by-science.html

by lxm • 7 years ago

214 61 7 years ago

inc.com

dqpb3• 7 years ago

Finally, a memory article that doesn't mention spaced repetition!

sigstoat• 7 years ago

they probably forgot about it.

insickness• 7 years ago

I see what you did there.

dorfsmay• 7 years ago

And yet it is the one technique backed up by science!

kazinator3• 7 years ago

It doesn't specifically mention spaced repetition, but spaced repetition is a way of quizzing yourself.

Spaced repetition is useful when the number of items to remember is very large; it's a way of optimizing the quizzing.

dqpb3• 7 years ago

Spaced repitition is orthogonal to quizzing yourself.

elviejo• 7 years ago

In Anki when you quiz yourself with your cards, it's Self Testing. Anki just adds the separation in time, to make it even more efficient.

mdorazio• 7 years ago

Good article on different techniques that don't require any special software/setup. Personally, quizzing doesn't really work for me, but discussing or (even better) trying to teach it to someone else is extremely effective. The third suggestion, association, has mixed results for me - I use it for names and dates, but trying anything more complicated isn't very effective. Anyone else have better results with these methods?

sweetbacon• 7 years ago

discussing or (even better) trying to teach it to someone else is extremely effective.

Whenever I have to learn a new OS, system, tool, programming language, etc: if I have trouble with it, I just write up a training manual as if I were also tasked with teaching others. What I end up with is a customized courseware for just me that I can refer back to at any time. Time consuming, but very effective for me.

jodrellblank2• 7 years ago

I wonder if the main benefit of blogs and tutorials is for the writer, not the reader.

This makes me wonder about the damage FAQs do to a community; where once there was a continual flow of new people needing newbie explanations - and a continual flow of not-quite-newbies benefiting from writing those explanations over and over, but different people each time, and implicitly being welcoming through that interaction - there is instead an implicitly unwelcoming response with a link to a FAQ. A FAQ which is dauntingly large due to its attempt to be comprehensive, but never deleted and refreshed, so getting ever more outdated and cruftier.

CGamesPlay2• 7 years ago

Can you explain why quizzing doesn’t really work for you? It feels fundamentally the same as teaching someone (active recall).

underbluewaters• 7 years ago

I've got a trick for remembering things that, to me at least, feels like magic. It was particularly useful in Biology courses where I would have to remember a large set of terminology like family names of fishes.

Just imagine a route you regularly take. Ideally a walk where you have time to consider your surroundings, but any route where you can remember landmarks will do. Now assign each thing you need to remember to a specific landmark. That's it. I've found that if I go through this process and then review it just once in my mind I can remember everything with 100% accuracy.

I used this trick recently to remember a gate code by assigning numbers to nearby architecture. I'd have a terrible time trying to remember it any other way.

arkitaip• 7 years ago

Sounds like Method of loci (memory palace) [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci

paideic• 7 years ago

A similar strategy works for remembering names too. The next time you meet someone, imagine their name emblazoned on their forehead in bright letters. At least for me, this helps to associate the intangible name with a real, physical thing - seeing their face almost becomes a kind of mnemonic.

kazinator3• 7 years ago

This is not going to work for serious memorization, like remembering 15,000 words of a foreign language.

You're not going to remember 15,000 landmarks along some route that you usually take.

perfmode• 7 years ago

i take it you’re new to the concept of memory palaces.

Veen• 7 years ago

Renaissance scholars such as Matteo Ricci and Giordano Bruni used the method of loci for exactly that.

rorykoehler2• 7 years ago

This is called the memory palace technique. Works well for very visual thinkers. Doesn't work at all well for me.

jolmg• 7 years ago

Visual thinkers? Is there some kind of categorization in how people think? Are there auditory thinkers, too?

scottlawson• 7 years ago

Some people learn best by listening, others by reading, etc. The same variation is true for memory techniques. Some memory techniques work better for some people than others.

However, strictly speaking, the technique should work well for everyone but especially well for some people.

The human brain can store and recall some types of information more readily than other types. Humans have an uncanny ability to recognize voices, recognize whether we have seen a face before, and we automatically absorb all sorts of information about places we travel to.

We struggle to deal with other types of information, like random series of digits, dates, etc.

All memory techniques work under the same principle: take something that you want to remember, and convert it into a different format which you can remember more easily.

Memory palace technique converts input into a spatial representation. That doesn't mean you have to have a good spatial memory! Unless you have a specific kind of brain damage or cognitive impairment then you have an excellent spatial memory just for being human.

If this technique doesn't work well for you, then the point of failure is your association between the hard to rememeber input and the easy to rememeber format. That's great news because it means there is a memory technique that will work great for you if you give it another try until you can figure out how to make effective associations.

m463• 7 years ago

When I'm driving my car and listening to an audiobook or podcast, I find that if I rewind it a couple minutes, my brain will flash back to where I was driving when I heard it the first time.

really weird.

additionally, and somewhat unrelated... The best racers know the course. They can sit back, close their eyes, drive the course in their mind, and open their eyes. If they are missing parts of the course in their memory, they have more to learn. If they time this exercise the closer they are to a lap time, the better they know the course (and the better chance they have of driving it well)

abakker• 7 years ago

The audiobook thing! Yes! I hike or mountain bike with books, too, and when I bike those routes now, sometimes I get almost total word recall of a moment in a book I heard years ago. It’s a great sensation.

lukkreung• 7 years ago

I recently signed up on goodreads and went and rated a bunch of books I have read to improve the suggestions. It's been fun using the app, as I keep recalling books I've read and they bring up fond memories. My girlfriend was impressed that I could remember what month and year I read books even over a decade ago. But as I saw the title and cover I could recall where I was when I read it. Many were on airplanes so I associated them with the trips and those were some of the easiest to recall.

reeves234232• 7 years ago

This happens when the podcast is paused and then next day when rewinded 10 secs and played back, exactly the location flashes in memory,really weird.

fjsolwmv• 7 years ago

Do you have hundreds of different memorized sets along this route now?

jneplokh2• 7 years ago

The memory palace technique is amazing and works wonders for me. However, I do mine a little differently where I imagine all the things I have to remember interacting with each other. I will have to try the landmark strategy though.

emilga• 7 years ago

Thomas Bradwardine (1300-1349) recommends combining the two techniques. I.e. at each Loci you link together more than one item using the story mnemonic.

looeee• 7 years ago

This is called the Roman Room technique:

https://m.wikihow.com/Remember-Lists-of-Words-With-the-Roman...

randomvectors• 7 years ago

Something that happens to me, which feels related, is that if I'm listening to a podcast for the second time, at memorable points of the podcast (when the topic changes for example) I always remember exactly where I was when I heard those words for the first time (which part of which street if I'm walking). It's strange.

todd8• 7 years ago

A few years ago, I decided I would learn how to memorize a deck of cards in a single pass through a shuffled deck. I was surprised to find that it wasn't too difficult. Googling will reveal a few instructional web pages or you tube videos. E.g. see [0].

First, I created a list of letters associated with the numbers 1-13 and suits. There are two commonly used methods for this. I had already used the Major System[1] when I first read about it many years before (1963) in an old 1957 Scientific American. The Major Method worked well and I could recall around 50 random items in order or reverse order or call out the 37 item and so forth.

I decided to try a newer system, the Dominic System[2] for memorizing cards. The Dominic System associates a person with each number, in this case a person was associated with each card. This is done by using the following mapping:

  0 - O (letter O)  Ten in a deck of cards
  1 - A (the ace)
  2 - B
  3 - C
  4 - D
  5 - E
  6 - S
  7 - G
  8 - H
  9 - N

Along with three more letters for Jack, Queen, and King. Using this mapping, a three of hearts (3H) would be represented by some celebrity, cartoon character, fictional character, or friend with the initials CH. In this case Captain Hook of Peter Pan.

With a few hours of practice, I could easily visualize Captain Hook whenever I turned over a 3 of Hearts; likewise, every card had an associated person.

Then I memorized 52 locations that I would remember easily. I used my home. Starting at the mailbox at the street I had a list of 10 spots: Mail box, Driveway, Guest parking spot, Parking outside of garage, Parking in garage, at the back door, inside the back door, laundry room, back stairs, kitchen door. Likewise, I had four other sequences of locations in my house and yard each 10 long and a couple more to make 52 locations.

I could then go through a shuffled deck of cards and if the three of hearts came up as the fifth card in the deck I would simply think of Captain Hook inside the garage (doing something dramatic, like putting his hook through the hood of my car). As each card was turned up, I pictured the character in the location doing something memorable. Then, a friend of mine might say "What was the location of the eight of spades? This card has initials HS == Homer Simpson so I would think of where I pictured Homer Simpson and realize that he was in my bed upstairs which was location 36 in my list of memorized locations so the eight of spades was in location 36.

It's a pretty impressive trick and it can be combined with card magic tricks without too much difficulty. For example, cutting a deck doesn't change the relative order of the cards to each other.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yevxvTbUa4s

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mnemonic_major_system

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominic_system

HNLurker22• 7 years ago

Nice!

MiddleEndian• 7 years ago

Now how about something to forget what I want?

zaphirplane• 7 years ago

2 options

Create happy memories to crowd out the sad ones.

Invent the MIB device

PopeDotNinja• 7 years ago

I like the first option. What I do is don't worry about forgetting. I let myself be as angry, frustrated, sad, whatevs. The biggest help is decoupling feeling from action. Just because I am angry, that doesn't mean it'd be a good idea to aim my anger at someone else. Then I just move on. Getting the emotional stuff out of the early frees me up to remember something without getting all emotional about it. Eventually I just have too many other experiences to process before I get to the thing I'd prefer to forget.

piracyde25• 7 years ago

11/10 want

ryannevius• 7 years ago

Trying to forget is futile. I recommend becoming a regular practitioner of awareness meditation.

CGamesPlay2• 7 years ago

Practice mindfulness to learn to prevent unwanted thoughts from distracting you, and learn to confront and accept memories that are emotionally distressing (therapy can help with this).

sys_64738• 7 years ago

Must remember to read this!

bgee• 7 years ago

If you need to remember printed material (for an exam etc.), I highly recommend this product [0].

It's basically a blue highlighter and a red transparent plastic sheet. You first highlight the stuff you want to test yourself on, and when you are ready you can cover the material with the red sheet. Now the highlighted words just became redacted like in a released CIA doc.

There is a review on Youtube that let you see how it actually looks [1].

[0] https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B01C02NOMQ/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_...

[1] https://youtu.be/et14d3cafcQ?t=58

akg_67• 7 years ago

Very common in Japan. Most test prep books in Japan come with red plastic sheet and important phrases and sentences printed in red in books.

jodrellblank2• 7 years ago

Highlighting notes, and re-reading notes are the two study techniques that students think are most effective, but studies show are less effective.

Spaced repetition, repeated testing yourself on the material, questioning yourself to prompt you to work your memory recall, are shown to be the most effective.

Sources discussed and referenced in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukLnPbIffxE

JoeAltmaier• 7 years ago

Agreed. In college (30 years ago) I found a brochure on the "SQ3R" method - Skim, Question, Read, Recite, Review. As an ADD person it revolutionized my college achievements. I could deliberately attack the learning process and get (something) out of a subject with my limited attention.

knubie• 7 years ago

While highlighting and re-reading notes might not be as effective as SRS quizzing, I still think there's a lot of value in writing the notes themselves. It sort of acts as the "summarize and share" part of this article (you're sharing with your later self).

I got frustrated with writing notes in one app, then making SRS cards out of them in another app, so I made one that combines the two[0]. I'm still trying to nail down the best workflow, but something like:

1) Read/watch material.

2) Summarize material in note(s)

3) Create cards from note(s) and study with SRS.

Works pretty well I think.

[0] https://mochi.cards

jneplokh2• 7 years ago

"What that [making yourself a quiz] forces you to do," Adam says, "is practice retrieving the information, which makes it stickier and easier to find yourself."

The same is true for flashcards where it is the process of creating them that helps remember the information. I have noticed when I don't create the flashcards I use, the information is not remembered as well.

danielbigham• 7 years ago

Something that I started doing recently is to create a "30 second summary" of each important concept, consisting of text and diagrams. I then record a 30 second video where I narrate, using good intonation, the 30 second summary. I also create a hyperlink from the summary to my notes of each prerequisite concept.

This serves three purposes:

1) The act of teaching is one of the best ways to solidify a concept in your mind. It forces you to have a good understanding of it, and forces your mind to produce a good internal organization around concept.

2) It usually takes a while to write + diagram a good summary, and takes a number of tries to get a smooth recording of you speaking the summary (Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHc-bog1hhE). All of this "repetition" / time spent with the concept makes it easier to remember.

3) Sooner or later we realize that remembering everything is impossible. Given enough time, concepts will decay in your mind. In the long term, one of the most important things for you to optimize is the speed at which you can re-create your mental model of a concept. Having these 30 second summaries, complete with links to prerequisite concepts, allows you to re-build your mental model of a subject area extremely quickly in the future in a just-in-time fashion. Just like a smartphone is an "extension" of your brain, a note system like I've described here is like an extension of your memory.

ddffre• 7 years ago

I highly recommend using flashcards apps, especially this one that I have found. As mentioned in the article about quizzes, this app has just that.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=flashcards.wor...

bemmu• 7 years ago

For those studying Japanese, this one is amazing: https://nihongo-app.com/

It has sets for all Japanese school grades, split into daily chunks so that you can keep going forward with the app for years.

The only thing missing is kanji stroke orders, but the dev has hinted that those would be coming soon.

vipref• 7 years ago

The linked article reads: "Because students believe that learning and testing are separate things, they often study inefficiently"

Efficient learning is not only about performing during a test, but understanding the subject matter.

HNLurker22• 7 years ago

Adam Grant is a charlatan. Never read his book. It is worthless self help.

How to Remember

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